ess, the best
qualities of these blank verse narratives are of the classic-epic kind.
The story is not badly told; the measure is correct if not distinguished;
and the style is simple, clear, and in pure taste. But the spell of
romance, the witchery of Coleridge and Keats is absent; and so are the
glow and movement of Scott.

Southey got up his history and local colour conscientiously, and his
notes present a formidable array of authorities. While engaged upon
"Madoc," he went to Wales to verify the scenery and even came near to
leasing a cottage and taking up his residence there. "The manners of the
poem," he asserted, "will be found historically true." The hero of
"Madoc" was a legendary Welsh prince of the twelfth century who led a
colony to America. The _motif_ of the poem is therefore nearly the same
as in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise," and it is curious to compare
the two. In Southey's hands the blank verse, which in the last century
had been almost an ear-mark of the romanticising schools, is far more
classical than the heroic couplet which Morris writes. In the Welsh
portion of "Madoc" the historical background is carefully studied from
Giraldus Cambrensis, Evans' "Specimens," the "Triads of Bardism," the
"Cambrian Biography," and similar sources, and in the Aztec portion, from
old Spanish chronicles of the conquest of Mexico and the journals of
modern travellers in America. In "The Earthly Paradise" nothing is
historical except the encounter with Edward III.'s fleet in the channel.
Over all, the dreamlike vagueness and strangeness of romance. Yet the
imaginative impression is more distinct, not an impression of reality,
but as of a soft, bright miniature painting in an old manuscript.

In common with his literary associates, Southey was prompted by Percy's
"Reliques" to try his hand at the legendary ballad and at longer metrical
tales like "All for Love" and "The Pilgrim to Compostella." Most of
these pieces date from the last years of the century. One of them, "St.
Patrick's Purgatory," was inserted by Lewis in his "Tales of Wonder."
Another of the most popular, and a capital specimen of grotesque, "The
Old Woman of Berkeley," was upon a theme which was also undertaken by
Taylor of Norwich and Dr. Sayers of the same city, when Southey was on a
visit to the former in 1798. The story, told by Olaus Magnus as well as
by William of Malmesbury, was of a witch whose body was carried off by
the dev